Yet Another Birthday
I'm 23. I had a good time with dinner at Red Lobster and then music and drinking at Zaphod's.

As the final five days of class draw to a close, it is amazing how much work there is to complete between now and (approximately) then. I spent the whole weekend working on my Xbox project report. Much procrastination when into that, and I'm not completely satisfied with the state of the current draft. It lacks cohesion and a few sections. It is also pretty sad that the appendices are longer than the rest of the report. I will have to fix this. However, using more advanced features of LaTeX, it looks great.

Throughout the process of procrastination, I discovered Epiar, an open-source game based heavily on Escape Velocity. It currently lacks story-line missions, but otherwise flying and fighting are similar, though distinct from EV. I hope to get involved with this project, perhaps in writing the story and missions.

My other major procrastination point was Sierra game MIDIs. I had the sudden urge to learn how to play Girl in the Tower from KQ6. When I printed out the music, it was very hard to play, being inconsistent in notes being represented interchangeably as sharps and flats. But I am crazy, so I decided to re-write it by hand, but I couldn't quite figure out the actual relative lengths of the notes from the MIDI file. This is because my printout didn't actually show the length of notes, only their relative separations. If there was a quarter note with an eighth half way through, both would show up as eighth notes, even though the first note is actually twice the length. After giving up, I just typed "girl in the tower sheet music" and sure enough, the original composer of the music, Mark Seibert, had simplified sheet music on his site. Now I have a timing reference. I also found Squirrel With The Power, a fun little remix of the original tune.

All in all, a productive, if not for school, weekend.